Immortal - "Blizzard Beasts", 1997

My earliest memory of "Blizzard Beasts" is buying it shortly after its release date in '97 from the local record shop, just to return it after a couple of days with some lame excuse; I didn't like it at all, and I was very disappointed. I couldn't grasp the band's evolution at that point, and I didn't give the record a chance to grow on me; before returning the CD, I dubbed it on a tape, though, so I ended up listening to it a few more times in the weeks that followed, and I progressively warmed up to it. I ended up buying the CD again later on, and nowadays I think it's actually the last true Immortal record, before Demonaz left Abbath in charge of the songwriting and of all the guitars, leading the band on a different path with "At the Heart of Winter".

The reasons why I disliked "Blizzard Beasts" in the beginning were more than one; for starters, its production. The album was recorded at Sigma Recording Studio in Bergen, Norway, by Henrikke Helland, and it will probably go down in history as the first and only Norwegian black metal record of the 90s engineered by a woman; apparently, she later moved on to a different career, currently being a respected journalist for a national TV channel. The sound is very peculiar; it's very dry, it's got no room resonance at all, and it feels like everything was recorded in a small box, with the drums - in particular - sounding like a toy drumkit. The vocals and the occasional lead guitars are at the forefront of the mix, with Abbath's squawk coming off as more intelligible than usual; the volume of the bass is uneven, going up and down depending on the riffs. One of the songs, "Winter of the Ages", even seems to have been recorded in a different session, revealing a clearly inferior production compared to the rest of the album. All in all, it was a bit of a train wreck, especially coming after three records that were recorded at the renowned Grieghallen studios; while still sounding raw and not necessarily balanced, especially "Battles in the North", each of them featured its own unique sound, and they were leagues better than what could be heard on "Blizzard Beasts". To its merit, though, the soulless production kind of fit the glacial, frostbitten mood of the album, being cold and mechanic, sounding like it was recorded in the middle of an ice storm, with the drums being progressively muffled by the snow and the guitar strings getting lambasted by the frozen winds. Paired with the now-classic cover picture, it incarnated the spirit of the record pretty accurately. 

Another thing that took me off guard back then was the not-so-slight change in style, incorporating Morbid Angel-style death metal riffs on many of the songs, as heard on the title track, "Suns That Sank Below", "Noctambulant" or "Frostdemonstorm"; even if guitarist Demonaz denied the claim, it's difficult to believe that the intricate, peculiar Trey Azagthoth's playing style - "Blasphemy" or "Rapture" come to mind - didn't influence the band here. To Demonaz's credit, though, it must be noted that his riffs featured that sort of chaotic, convulsive, out-of-control quality on "Battles in the North" already, so this might have been just a natural evolution of his technique; the fact that Immortal shared a tour with Morbid Angel just a couple of years before, though, certainly didn't help dismiss the feeling that the band stole a page or two from the Floridians' playbook. "Blizzard Beasts" also features some thrash metal and classic metal-inspired riffs, with more melodic and catchy passages, as evidenced by songs such as "Nebular Ravens Winter", "Battlefields", "Winter of the Ages", and "Mountains of Might", the latter being an epic, atmospheric mid-tempo song that feels like a perfect sequel to the classic "Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)". 

Immortal probably has never been the tightest band in the world, and it certainly wasn't back in 1997; while then-new entry Horgh went on to become an accomplished drummer in the years that followed, on this record he seems to just be trying to play as fast as possible, without much attention to detail. The kick-drum technique, in particular, seems to be rather sloppy, but, to his credit, the questionable production definitely didn't enhance his performance, and the band's songs were fast as hell for the times. It must also be noted that editing/quantizing the drums with computer software wasn't really a thing back then, especially for bands on a budget; this said, trying to keep up a perpetually, insanely fast double kick rhythm under every riff, even the mid-tempo ones, didn't seem necessary, but that's probably how he was instructed to play by Abbath and Demonaz. 

The album clocks in at about 28 minutes, and considering back in those days there were EPs that lasted about the same, it felt a bit like getting ripped off; you can get a pass if you're Slayer with "Reign in Blood", but this wasn't the case. However, it's a pretty furious, intense record; it's not too far removed from the more brutal tracks featured on "Battles in the North", but overall, it seems to leave behind the more dramatic quality of the leads found on that record (or - even more - on the ones before it) to focus on another kind of melody. It's got a different flavor from the first three records, giving it a character of its own, but when you think about it, they all sounded different from each other already.

"Blizzard Beasts" is one of those black metal records coming out at a time when things within the scene were changing; the Norwegian heavyweights were all on a downhill slope - to varying degrees - or transitioning towards more experimental efforts, and others were in the process of reintroducing some death metal influences, such as Gehenna with "Adimiron Black" or Enslaved with "Mardraum". Production values and techniques were increasingly moving towards digital, leaving the analog behind in favor of colder, more mechanical-sounding records. Black metal was then becoming a worldwide phenomenon, and the internet was on the rise; it was the end of an era, and a lot of the black metal albums released in the second half of the 90s seem to suffer from this feeling of uncertainty, failing to repeat the standards that the bands set for themselves with their previous records. At the same time, this process gave birth to distinctive - while imperfect - records, and "Blizzard Beasts" definitely qualifies as one of them. "At the Heart of Winter" might have been the album that projected the band into the major league, but "Blizzard Beasts" represents one of the last emanations of that unrepeatable 90s magic; in that regard, it's certainly more meaningful now than at the time it was released.